What I remember from my daughter Melanie's birth: I only missed an inning and a half of a baseball game on TV

I'm kidding, of course. I mean, we really did have the Cleveland Indians-Boston Red Sox doubleheader on the TV in the labor and delivery room. And Terry was so good at birthing babies by that point (Melanie is/was our fourth) she made the whole thing happen really, really fast.

But it's not like the baseball games are my #1 memory from the day's proceedings.

Melanie's full head of hair and beautiful face when she came out. And the amazing strength Terry showed in bringing this beautiful little girl into the world. Those things are what I remember most.

The Indians were a close second.

Maybe third.

Anyway, Mel turns 24 years old tomorrow, which seems impossible, but the calendar does not lie. I was not, of course, the one who birthed her on September 21, 2000, but I seem to remember Terry's labor that day being just about the easiest among all of our kids.

As was the case with four of our five children, they hooked Terry up to a Pitocin pump to induce contractions, since all of our kids except Chloe had to be coaxed out of the womb (it must have been really comfortable in there). And I know that at some point Terry was experiencing enough pain to make the whole thing less than enjoyable.

But really, relative to the other times I watched her do this, Melanie's birth seemed like such a breeze.

I remember Terry calmly informing the L&D nurses and her doctor (the great Dinkar Rao) that it was time for Mel to make her appearance. And they took Terry seriously and made the necessary preparations because, when it comes to matters like this, veteran moms like my wife know what they're talking about.

I took a lot of pictures of Melanie in the moments after she was born. Like, before they even had a chance to wipe the goo off her and she was still connected to her mother via the umbliical cord.

The child was literally seconds old and all I could think to do was play photographer.

The other thing I remember about Mel's birth was bringing her home and all of us – all six of us – getting sick at the same time. It was a stomach thing, I believe, because our living room was lined with old blankets to catch any misdirected puke.

In time we all recovered, of course, and Melanie turned out to be such a wonderful addition to our family. She's a smart, successful, beautiful young woman, and I'm so proud of her.

For the record, the Indians and Red Sox split that doubleheader. I only wish the Tribe could have won both games in Mel's honor.

Thoughts on childbirth from someone who has never had to do it

I know several women who either recently have or very soon will be giving birth. This is extremely impressive to me. As I've mentioned before, I've had a front-row seat to this event five times, and the whole thing is mind-boggling.

I often say that the sheer physics of the process alone is puzzling. You can talk all you want about how a woman's hips widen and her body adapts in order to accommodate the exiting child, but it still doesn't change the basic fact of large-baby-passing-through-small-opening.

I don't get it. I really don't. I've seen it happen, but it seems like an elaborate magic trick or something. Like after the child emerges, David Copperfield should walk into the delivery room and explain how the whole thing was just an illusion and the baby was actually grown in a laboratory somewhere. That would be far more plausible than what really occurs in childbirth.

My wife had four conventional deliveries (as if there's anything "conventional" about it) and one Cesarean section. The C-section was with baby #5, and Terry still says she wished it would have come the normal way.

(NOTE: In that one paragraph alone, I referred to the commonly accepted method of delivery as "conventional" and "normal." I did this because I can't bring myself to type the V-initialed medical term for these sorts of births. I know it's no big deal and all, and we're (mostly) adults here, but my fingers just won't do it. I'm eating lunch as I write this, and typing that word would very likely ruin the experience for me. Just so you know.)

Anyway, the C-section was a real trip. We had planned to have Jack the, uh, regular way, but at some point during labor he decided to flip upside down, and the doctor pretty much said it was either a C-section or else the baby was going to stay in there forever. Terry opted for the C-section.

Once that decision was made, they whisked her away to do whatever it is they do to women who are about to undergo this procedure. A nurse came in and gave me a set of scrubs to change into, so I did that and then waited around for someone to come and get me so I could be there when my son came out.

This took a long time. Or at least it seemed like a long time. I waited and paced for something like 45 minutes, when I guess someone in the O.R. with Terry looked around and said, "Wait, is the dad here? Someone needs to go and get the dad." So someone came and retrieved the dad and I walked into the delivery room, where my wife was laid out helplessly on a table with a surgical curtain draped across her chest.

The curtain was there so that she didn't have to view all the messiness associated with an operation in which they cut you open and lift a child from your womb. I, on the other hand, had been in operating rooms several times during my years at the Cleveland Clinic, and I tend not to mind blood and gore. As they were working on her, Terry asked me to peek over the curtain and let her know what I saw. So I did.

"Organs and goo," is what I reported back. Because that's really all I saw. They had taken various bodily organs out of her abdominal cavity, as far as I could tell, and laid them off to the side like jigsaw puzzle pieces. I made a mental note to ask later if they remembered exactly how everything fit back in there, because I'm terrible at puzzles and would be of no help.

Anyway, after a few minutes they hoisted Jack out of his mother's belly and held him up to allow me to announce his gender to the room. We never found out the sex of any of our babies ahead of time, instead preferring the very cool surprise you get when you discover the answer at the moment of birth. But they held him up at a strange angle, and it took me several seconds to get a clear view of the goods. It was pretty clear he was a boy at that point, and as if to confirm the verdict, Jack peed all over his mother right then and there. I was so proud.

It may have been messy and required several stitches afterward, but the C-section was a far more enjoyable experience for me -- not that I obviously counted for much, but still -- than the four clearly-physically-impossible births had been. Watching my first four kids being born was a lot like being in a car accident: I was dazed and confused afterward, I wasn't quite sure what I had seen, and there was a heck of a mess that I was willing to pay someone else to clean up.

Because honestly, there's a lot going on when a child is born. They show you the video in biology class or Lamaze, but nothing at all can prepare you for the reality of it. Things came out of my wife that I didn't even know existed. Medical personnel whom I hadn't seen all day suddenly came out of nowhere to fulfill whatever small role they were assigned in the birth of my child. People started speaking in urgent tones, telling my wife to PUSH PUSH PUSH, though I'm quite sure she didn't need any prodding from them.

And I wasn't even the one giving birth! I was just a clueless bystander. My wife, the star of this whole show until the moment the baby came out, displayed a quiet confidence and ability I had no idea she possessed until she gave birth the first time. I may have been freaking out, but she was pretty clearly in control. There was always this look on her face that said, "Seriously, don't worry, I've got this." And she did, too.

A lot of women like to say that men could never have babies. And I don't know that I fully agree. I mean, I could do it. If you put a growing baby inside of me, I would eventually find a way to pass the thing. But there's no way I would ever do it as well as Terry did. God just didn't give me the same capacity for this that He gave her, and as far as I'm concerned, that's a good thing.

It's not so much the actual birth that would throw me off. It's the nine months or so leading up to it. In addition to your body getting larger, there are all sorts of physical discomforts associated with pregnancy that would seriously wear me out. Especially in the summer. Two of our kids were born in August and September, which means Terry spent the last trimester of two pregnancies during the warm, humid summer months. Not good.

But she bore up well under the burden of it. I, on the other hand, would have whined about it 24 hours a day. Seriously, I would have complained constantly. One baby would have been enough for me. But she somehow made it through five. God bless her.

There's winners and there's losers (and I'm south of the line)

If you've ever had a baby - or, like me, have watched your wife have a baby - you're probably familiar with the Apgar score.

The Apgar score is a way for doctors to instantly assess the health of a newborn baby. It takes into account things like pulse rate, muscle tone and breathing, and it's done on a scale of 1 to 10.

I can't remember the exact Apgar scores of my five children when they were born, but I'm pretty sure they were all something like 9 (there may have been one 8 in there, I don't know). But what I do remember is that none of them got a 10.

In every instance, this genuinely offended me as a father. These kids were seconds old, dripping in goo and in some cases still physically attached to their mother through a slimy umbilical cord, and already someone was judging them...and finding them lacking.

"Wait, why didn't my kid get a perfect score? What's wrong with her? She's beautiful and perfect, DO YOU HEAR ME? SHE'S PERFECT!"

As if the case with almost everything in my life, I now realize that I was an idiot. The Apgar score obviously is not a measure of a baby's worth as a person, but right away I became The Overbearing Protective Father.

If one of my kids had received, say, an Apgar score of 5 or less, I guarantee you my thought process would have been something like, "Oh no, he's deformed. All of the other kids are going to make fun of him. He'll have no confidence and won't be able to get into an elite kindergarten. That, of course, will put him on the 'normal track,' and Harvard and Princeton will never accept him. I've already failed as a parent!"

(NOTE: If this sounds neurotic to you, it is. I'm a far mellower dad now than I was 18 years ago when Elissa was born, though most of the time back then I kept my insane thoughts to myself. Thankfully.)

Anyway, I bring this up in the wake of Solo & Ensemble Contest, which we attended on Saturday at Cleveland Heights High School. For those of you who aren't band geeks, Solo & Ensemble Contest - or just "Contest," as it's commonly referred to - is an annual event in which instrumental and vocal students perform in front of judges, who in turn assess their performances and given them ratings from 1 to 5...or actually "I to V," since they use Roman numerals.

Not every band kid participates in Contest, but a lot do. Terry and I did when we were in high school, so between that and the fact that their private lessons teachers would find it unacceptable if they didn't, Elissa and Chloe also endure the Contest experience each year.

What happens is that your band teacher or private instructor assigns you a piece to perform, usually something classical and challenging to play. Then you practice it for months on end in preparation for a single 10-minute period when you have to play it for a judge. The goal is to earn a "1" (superior) rating because...well, I don't know the "because." Really, until this moment, I never considered why this is done. To make you a better musician? To teach you something about the value of hard work and discipline? To humiliate you in front of others? I'll say yes, yes and yes.

The kids put a lot of work into the process, and it's always a nerve-wracking thing when it's time to walk down to your performance room and play your piece for evaluation. "Nerve-wracking," that is, for the parents. The kids get nervous, too, but nothing like the parents, believe me.

I hate the whole Contest experience only because I'm afraid my kid will feel like a failure if he/she falls short of his goal. And since the kids have my nonsensical, stress-inducing tendency toward perfectionism, the goal for them is always a "1." Always. They're like little Asian overachievers, and I'm seriously afraid they'll slit their wrists if they get anything less than the top score.

Because honestly, I don't care if they get a "1" or not. I would like them to earn the highest rating, of course, but it's not that big a deal to me if they don't. But it IS a big deal to them, and I don't want them to feel bad. So I worry. And get really nervous. And so does Terry.

When Elissa was playing her solo on Saturday, I glanced over at Terry at one point and noticed she was doing the same thing I was doing: Looking straight down toward the floor. I did it because it made the knot in my stomach even bigger if I looked at Elissa while she played. Terry did it because she figured eye contact would make Elissa more nervous. Our family is just one big, sensitive Ball of Nervous at Contest. What should be a fun experience instead shortens each of our life spans by five years.

I feel the same way at spelling bees. The whole thing is unpleasant for me. Really, any event in which my kid will be evaluated, judged, assessed and/or otherwise put up for appraisal makes my insides churn. I know it's good for them, but I don't like it.

Now Elissa is a senior on the verge of entering college, and the whole competition thing is even worse: What's your class rank? Your SAT score? Your ACT score? Your grades?

This Sunday she and two teammates will be taping an episode of "Academic Challenge" to air on Cleveland's WEWS Channel 5 in the spring. They'll be up against two other schools, which means there will be a winning team and two losing teams. Get that? Only 33% of participants will succeed, while the other 67% will fail. That's the way it is, and either way my heart will be racing.

It almost makes me look forward 15 or 20 years into the future when we'll have grandchildren and my own kids can be the ones doing the worrying. Of course, I'll probably get even more nervous for THEIR events and competitions. Maybe I should just have this inevitable heart attack now and get it over with.